Yellowstone is full of wildlife, blissfully unafraid of human beings and wildly attracted to picnic baskets. The terrible thing, indicative of the most horrible decline of American culture, is that none of the neighbor’s children, ranging from kindergarten through seventh grade, had heard of either Yogi Bear or Jellystone. (Click on the thumbnail images to see larger versions.)
Candy and I saw very little wildlife, at least very little of photogenic wildlife. This was due to an unfortunate misalignment between the wildlifes’ circadian cycles and our own. We, being on vacation, had little desire to be up and active during the the animals’ dawn activity period and their evening period inconveniently conflicted with the beer and dinner hour. Priorities are priorities and I can only hope that, next time we visit the region, the local fauna will get their priorities straight.
The few which did make a reasonable appearance before my lens included Mrs. Moose, shot at mid-day from the porch of Jackson Lake Lodge
and Mr. Moose who led me on a merry chase along a field in the north end of Grand Teton National Park. Mr. Moose was simply strolling along but those long legs carried him at quite a hefty clip. I started out behind him and at the rear of a long line of parked cars and never quite made it in front of his face before he vanished into the woods.
We did see lots of bison in Yellowstone. I’d like to say that they looked majestic but, to me, they just look dim. This guy and several of his friends were parked at the side of the road, completely unconcerned with us nutty humans with clicking cameras.
Unlike the bison, the elk seem to only grant up close ‘n’ personal photo ops to photographers who know someone. I don’t so I got the peeping Tom shot from afar.
Believe it or not, the crow by the sidewalk at Old Faithful was by far the most entertaining and educational animal of the trip. Candy had purchased an ice cream cone at the gift shop. These “contain” so much ice cream that they are served in plastic cups with the cones jauntily perched atop, like party hats. Candy’s cone took a header onto the sidewalk where it stayed, ineligible for the 10-second rule.
After Candy and I moved over to another bench which accorded a better view of the geyser, the crow made its move on the cone, snapping it up whole. The bird spent a good 5 minutes flitting around the area looking for a good place to hide its large treasure. It tried a few depressions in the ground and several hollows next to various fallen branches and roots. Finally, the bird set the cone against a large log, buried it with loose dirt, and carefully picked up a light colored leaf about the size of a silver dollar and used it to mark the hiding spot. Who knew that a crow would pick up and carefully place a marker like that?
One task remained for the crow. He came over and lectured me about the impropriety of staring at him.
